What are your bee-breeding strategies?

[namiasdf]

I've finally delved into the complex world of bee breeding. The addictive excitement that comes along with every cycle of bee and seeing the results has captivated my attention.

I was wondering what you guys have developed in terms of strategies for bee breeding on a semi-massive scale or at least a sustainable/semi-automated system.

I understand that to satisfy any mutation combination, either drone or princess has to be one or the other. The princess is the type of bee you'll most likely get back as that will be the queen's type. A couple things:

(1) Will you always have a "basic" bee breeding set to produce common, then cultivated drones for the purposes of getting nobles/diligent and the rest down those couple trees? It seems to me like the only way to produce a princess is to mutate a princess from the very basics up, which seems to make sense.

(2) Does this mean your bee breeding factory will only continue to grow. If the above is the case, you will never stop breeding more common/cultivated bees. Finding room for this is going to be.... Along with eventual alvearies...

I guess my strategy will be more or less, something similar to this:

(1) Have a breed cycle of basic bee's to continuously produce common queens, then use those queens along with basic bees to produce cultivated bees. From there have similar "breeding blocks" to produce the other types that lead to pollen/royal jelly.

(2) Once a steady pair of any type is found, throw that set into a production block which purposes are to (a) produce combs and (b) produce redundant drones for further breeding purposes.

I think this is what everyone does. There is no definite path, you just have to continuously mutate princesses into one of the pair you require for further mutation and use stable pairs to produce drones to match with any princesses you happen to produce.

This makes complete automation near impossible, but I'm wondering if I'm missing anything or if there are any ingenious strategies that you guys may have come up with.

 

[gusgillis1]

Get bees/apiary from Village. Find meadow bee's and Forest bee's. Bread them together. Don't get cultivated. Repeat until bored, then stop messing with bee's because I don't like them.

 

[Dee_Twenty]

If on a server: Find someone else to deal with the Forestry stuff while I stick with my areas of expertise, IC2, Buildcraft, Thaumcraft, Tinkers Construct, and diggy diggy hole.
If playing in single player: Sod it.

 

[PoisonWolf]

The chance of what you get back is equal from a princess to drone perspective. It only depends on the species across both columns, for the princess and the drone (and the number of drones the princess can produce).

1) I always have 2 basic apiaries. One looping a common, and one looping another higher tier bee (that does not mutate with any other bee). If I'm trying to purify a bee but it mutates with a common bee, I'll use the higher tier bee.

2) Your bee factory will only grow to the extent of what you're trying to produce. You won't use all the bees. I just get to a point of one princess and a stack of those drones...and if it's unnecessary (i.e., only used to get the next tier bee), I'll just store it in a chest.

Dont try to mutate by automation. It's a waste of time and depends too much on luck. Only automate cloning (i.e., when you have the bee that you want), which is super easy to do.

Have lots of chocolate frames, and soul frames. You do not need to deal with fancy machines. Those two sets of frames will suffice. That's how all of my bees. Lol.

So consider purifying and beefing up a valiant bee to get your cocoa combs for cocoa beans. The first few bees you want are imperial, industrious, valiant (if you dont have a cocoa farm), and farmed bee (if you don't have a seed oil farm).

Welcome to finally starting bees. They're not as complicated as people make them out to be.

Then challenge yourself to get to a point where you get 36 stacks of platinum combs....per bee tick cycle. That's 64 iridium per 30 second-ish. Lol. You may need 200 alvearies for this? Lol.

 

[namiasdf]

Well, my interests mainly lie in trying to automate everything. I don't really care what the mod is, as so long as there is an element of automation present. The challenge in achieving that automation, efficiently (materials/time) and integrated usage with AE, etc.

I don't treat mods separately.[DOUBLEPOST=1374814310][/DOUBLEPOST]Hmm. I guess I'll stick to manual breeding and then clone through automation. What do you mean by point (1)? Do you have two basic apiaries being fed a constant amount of common/higher tier bee DRONES to mutate with another princess?

What do you mean by purify? Isn't the best way just to use the same species?[DOUBLEPOST=1374814403][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, beefing up means using DNA, etc. to get nocturnal and other good traits. Could you list some of these for me, if not all and how to get them?

 

[PoisonWolf]

Well, my interests mainly lie in trying to automate everything. I don't really care what the mod is, as so long as there is an element of automation present. The challenge in achieving that automation, efficiently (materials/time) and integrated usage with AE, etc.

I don't treat mods separately.[DOUBLEPOST=1374814310][/DOUBLEPOST]Hmm. I guess I'll stick to manual breeding and then clone through automation. What do you mean by point (1)? Do you have two basic apiaries being fed a constant amount of common/higher tier bee DRONES to mutate with another princess?

What do you mean by purify? Isn't the best way just to use the same species?[DOUBLEPOST=1374814403][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, beefing up means using DNA, etc. to get nocturnal and other good traits. Could you list some of these for me, if not all and how to get them?

It means I have an apiary that loops into itself, and all excess are sent to a void pipe. In the apiary is a pure-bred common princess, and the same identical (in terms of traits) pure-bred common drones. Whenever I need common bees, I'll just come and grab half of the stack and go off. Because the apiary is looping, eventually it'll reach a stack of 64 drones again. And I have a second apiary for my higher tier bee. Does this makes sense? Essentially I only grab them when I need it for purification purposes. Both apiaries are isolated by themselves. And yes, only pure-bred drones will stack together.

I apologize as I have likely been using terms that are confusing. I guess what is more accurate is that purifying is the process of making your bee species equal in traits, across both columns. So when a bee has traits that are identical in the lfet and right column, that's a pure-bred bee. The process of getting there is purifying.

When you mutate bees, sometimes you'll get something like common-cultivated hybrid. Then you'll need to purify the bee, and depending what you want, you'll purify to get either a common bee or a cultivated bee.

I prefer to do the beefing up manually and not using DNA. This becomes easy once you understand the mechanics of how traits are passed on. If you're interested in doing it manually, I've written a long post about this elsewhere (link here).

For starters, just get a rocky bee. It has all the awesome traits, great tolerances, and works in any condition. Then, simply get the x4 drone fertility trait from wintry bees and tack it on to the rocky bee. Then get the fast trait from cultivated bees and tack it on the same rocky bee. This will get you going for a long time before you upgrade.

Several other traits that you will want to reach end-game are...
Ender Bee (for a larger area effect).
One of the thaumcraft bees, I think it's aura bee, has the largest area effect, and also the fastest bee trait.
Imperial bees for the beatific effect (regeneration).
Edenic bees for the exploration effect (exp).
The maximum pollination trait appears to elude me. You'll have to search the wiki for that one.
To get the +5 tolerance trait will require the one-time use of an acclimator machine?
If you hate having flowers near your bees, then get the arid bee for the none-flower requirement (warning: if you're into tree breeding, the none flower trait does not work).
That's about it for uber traits, I think.

 

[namiasdf]

Those are some pretty damned good bees.

What is flyer for? Cave you can get from rocky bees and nocturnal from modest. 4x drone is from wintry, but I think the winter biome is a bit away from my base. I might mass produce imperial/industrious as to get lots of jelly, etc.


Does this also mean you identify just about every single bee you find? Hmmmm.

I'm just more interested in being able to sustain my nuclear reactor system off radioactive bees. Bees are a means to an end for me. For any project, synergizing strategies across multiple mods is where the fun in FTB lies for me. Bees is once such area.

 

[PoisonWolf]

Those are some pretty damned good bees.

What is flyer for? Cave you can get from rocky bees and nocturnal from modest. 4x drone is from wintry, but I think the winter biome is a bit away from my base. I might mass produce imperial/industrious as to get lots of jelly, etc.


Does this also mean you identify just about every single bee you find? Hmmmm.

I'm just more interested in being able to sustain my nuclear reactor system off radioactive bees. Bees are a means to an end for me. For any project, synergizing strategies across multiple mods is where the fun in FTB lies for me. Bees is once such area.

Flyer = Works in rain. If your base is going to be underground, I guess it won't matter. I believe rocky bees have all three by default (with the extra bees mod I think). Otherwise, some forest bees...have a low% chance of having the flyer trait.

You only need a winter biome to do the initial purification process. Once you give it enough tolerances, it'll work fine in your hopefully, normal biome. Trust me, before you start anything, get the x4 trait on a rocky bee. Your mutation journey will be made easier 100 fold. It essentially gives you more chances when purifying.

The progression gets exponentially easier, but initially, yes, you'll notice that you're pathetically low on honey drops all the time due to having to identify every damn thing. Lol. This is normal.

If you want to use radioactive bees, and have it have the best stats, you're still going to have to fulfill most of the bee mod. There's no short way about it. Unless if you don't mind having default radioactive bees, with the radioactive effect (i.e., without an apiarist suite, you will keep taking damage until you die, when you're within the bee's working area).

Use your bees for whatever you like, across your projects. You don't need to get super bees, as you can simply scale it by having more alvearies. That's ultimately up to you.

 

[namiasdf]

Well, that is to say, I am willing to fully delve into the requirements for the mod as well. I don't want to run out of things to do as well. Bees would open doors to other projects and only increase the amount of "stuff" I have in my base making it more "impressive".

Plus, wax capsules/containers are an essential part of my base. I move biofuel around through my AE system and output it wherever I need it using liquid transposers. It's interesting. I interpret it as having combined my waterproof pipe line with my AE line.[DOUBLEPOST=1374816925][/DOUBLEPOST]I think for now, getting to alvearies is my main goal. From there I can have any biome required, at home. It'll mean I can spend less resources on apiaries, as I am more interested in automating frame housing, etc.

I do want to delve into DNA as its another thing that I can "do". I also have huge issues with wasting resources (voiding, having 2 billion things in a DSU, I have to deal with surplus in realistic ways, melting all the extras into DNA is one such strategy, then recycling, then... I dunno...).

 

[namiasdf]

Well I spent a few hours breeding. I have 4 sets of imperials and 3 sets of industrious. I should have alvearies soon-ish. As long as you have frames, you have more than enough honey, even enough to start building scented paneling.

Thanks for the tips man. I now have fast works, shortest lifetime, nocturnal bees. Aiming for cave, etc. Somehow got iron bees, I don't know how that happened, heh.